Front loading garbage collection trucks are common in the field of trash, garbage, refuse and/or recyclable materials removal. Typically, the truck includes an arm at the front of the truck that grabs with forks or other grabbing mechanism a trash can or other receptacle containing trash, garbage, refuse and/or recyclable materials. The grabbing mechanism is attached to an arm that travels over the top of the cab of the truck and behind the cab to an opening called a hopper and dumps the trash, garbage, refuse and/or recyclable materials can therein. Once the garbage is inside the body of the trash truck, a packing blade pushes the garbage to the rear end of the truck to make room for more trash, garbage, refuse and/or recyclable materials and to optionally allow for expulsion through the rear of the trash truck once full.
One problem that often occurs is that some of the garbage is not grabbed by the packing blade on the push through. When garbage is left behind like this, the missed garbage needs to be manually removed by the operator. To accomplish this, the driver must climb inside the body of the trash truck. Additionally, a side door is required for access as is a floor clean-out trough to remove the missed garbage.
Also with front loading garbage trucks, there is often some sort of shield over the cab of the chassis to prevent debris that may fall out of the container being dumped from falling onto the cab of the truck. These shields are solid construction, but have been known to include a single hole in the top for the chassis engine exhaust pipe. This system has problems, however, in that the action of moving over the engine and the exhaust creates heat over the cab. Engine heat trapped under this cab shield design can then enter back into the engine air intake system thereby causing engine problems.
There is a need for a front loading trash truck engine design that overcomes the aforementioned shortcomings in the prior art.